Heaven's Beach
by Illaine Waterhouse
Summary: Commander Shepard sacrifices herself in the green beam to give the Galaxy life. However, her journey is not yet complete. Reunion with an old friend on a beach in Heaven is a very pleasant start when you have the rest of eternity in front of you.
1. Chapter 1

**Greetings!**

**I've always liked Mordin, and has always been sad that he dies. Consequently, this fic is about Mordin and Shepard as they meet in the Afterlife. In my headcanon, Mordin always, always gets his sunny beach and seashells, no matter if he dies curing the Genophage, if he survived the War or if you shoot him (which is horribly cruel). And when Shepard dies and goes to Heaven, her best friend is there to welcome her.**

**Warnings for fluff, angst, mentions of Shakarian, and custom femShep.**

**Minstrel in the Gallery is an awesome Beta and her fic 'Music of the Spheres' is beautiful and absolutely worth a read.**

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The green light seared through her as she fell, burning the skin and flesh away from her bones. The cybernetic upgrades in her eyes overloaded and exploded, plunging her into a featureless dark as shards of molten metal carved paths through her head and splattered on the inside of her skull.

In her last moments, Commander Eilir Shepard thought about Garrus Vakarian. Her Garrus. The tall, pale Turian with the beautiful ice-coloured eyes, her mate. She thought about him and the future they could have had, but she could not make herself really regret her decision.

_I'm so sorry, Garrus,_ she thought as the rest of her implants went and took her mind with them.

Salt. The air smelled of salt and sun and sand. Shepard sat up, confusion lining her face and darkening her green-and-rust eyes as her hands dug into the soft, fine sand beneath her.

She was on a beach.

It was a beach out of a brochure. The sand was fine and soft and almost white in the warm mid-morning sunlight, the sea mirroring the clear sky in its impossibly beautiful blue hue. Small seashells dotted the shoreline where the small waves lapped gently at the sand, leaving darker patches as the water –which looked quite warm- pulled back, only to throw itself forward again in an eternal cycle.

Behind her, the beach stretched on for some feet before grass and then jungle took over, replacing the pale yellow of the sand with a rich green as strangely familiar plants towered up from the ground. Strange calls and songs issued from the tangle of vegetation, and colourful somethings flitted between the branches and lianas at the very edge.

Only then did Shepard look at herself.

She wasn't wearing her armour anymore, nor was there a gun magnetically attached to her hip. In fact, the holster wasn't there at all. She was wearing loose dark pants that ended just below her knees and a comfortable green tank top, and her hair was long and soft and fell in loose, wavy curls down her back.

She felt fine, too. At the end, she had barely been able to limp along and the distance to that beam had seemed endless, but now she felt as fine as she had done when she first stepped onto the Normandy, four years ago. Rested, not hungry, not thirsty, not scared, not sad. She only felt a powerful confusion and a lingering sense of loss and regret that was rapidly fading... even as the sound of soft footsteps reached her ears.

She knew who it was before she turned her head, but she was still somewhat surprised to see him.

Mordin Solus. The old Salarian had given his life to cure the Genophage, and his death had hit Shepard hard. Knowing that he had reached his sunny beach and seashells made a warm feeling spread in her chest even as she realized that she was dead, too, and this was heaven.

"Mordin!" The Salarian looked up at the sound of his name, barely managing to stay on his feet as Commander Shepard barrelled into him and hugged him hard. Chuckling, he dropped his little red beach bucket and put his arms around the human for a few moments. Even though he was pleased to see her, he gently eased her arms off before she could strangle him. Not that he could die here, but old habits die hard and he had never been a fan of physical contact.

"Shepard!" he said. "Good to see you again." Shepard stepped back and looked him over. He was still the same old, scarred Professor she had met on Omega and parted with on Tuchanka, not some younger, idealized version.

Beaming at him, she blinked furiously to hold back the tears that threatened to spill over. Apparently it was possible to cry in Heaven. "Damn, I've missed you," she said, settling for a pat on the shoulder instead of giving him another bone-crushing hug. Then, remembering one of their last conversations, she asked him if he had gone crazy yet.

Mordin's laugh was a beautiful sound, unhindered by sorrow or stress. "No, not yet," he assured her. "Have run experiments on the seashells." They shared a laugh over that, before Mordin picked up his little red bucket -which was, in Shepard's opinion, _adorable_ (not that she'd _ever_ say that, of course) - and they started walking along the beach, chatting about the old days.

For a while they reminisced and laughed at their shared past and all the mischief they had gotten up to, if you could call it that, but soon the conversation turned to more recent events. It turned out that once you died, the only way to obtain information on the Living was by asking the newly-arrived, and Mordin, being the inquisitive Salarian he was, soon started asking Shepard all kinds of questions about the End.

"It was hell," Shepard said. "Rubble everywhere. No sun, just this weak grey light that made no shadows. Bits of paper and fabric and dead leaves floating on the wind," she closed her eyes and swallowed as she saw London again, vividly, in her mind's eye. "No corpses except for those we made, but the air still had this dead feel and smell to it. And there were Reaper ground forces everywhere." She shivered as new memories from the Reaper-held metropolis surfaced in her mind, assaulting her carefully built and maintained mental shield, hammering and howling and moaning like the living dead she had fought for so long.

Commander Shepard hardly noticed it when Mordin put an arm around her shoulders and gently guided her over to a washed-up log where moments ago there had been only sand. She sat down, not noticing the gentle creaking of dry, salt-encrusted wood, and buried her face in her hands as she fought to keep her tears back and regain control of her emotions.

"No need for that," a gentle voice told her as three long fingers settled on her shoulder. "In Heaven now. Emotions acceptable, required even." She gave a shaky laugh that came out more like a sob than she liked. Of course he had figured this out.

Still, she kept attempting to rein in her emotions. Years and years of regarding crying as a weakness, as something she _could not_ do, were now coming back to bite her. Hard.

Mordin shifted slightly beside her, once again putting an arm around her shoulders. When he started to sing something inside her burst. Commander Eilir Shepard curled up in the old Salarian's embrace and cried like a child.

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**Yup. Leaving you here for now, with this tearful-fluffy ending. More will come!  
**

**Damn, Mordin speak is difficult. But I won't rant about that, when there are so many other rant-worthy things out there.**

**Each review is a hug for Mordin!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello again, my dear readers! Short chapter because it wanted to be short. **

**Beta'd by the wonderful Minstrel in the Gallery, who has her own Mordin-centric fic that's absolutely worth the read.**

**Enjoy!**

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Mordin held her as she cried, waiting with unusual patience for her to pour out all her sorrow and pain. At some point, she wasn't sure when, he started singing something in his own native tongue, the tones rising and falling and weaving like a seashore breeze, calming her, helping her as the full extent of her tragedies laid itself bare to her mind and drove all remnants of self-control away in its desperate attempt to leave her mind whole and healed.

After what seemed like an eternity and a second, she calmed down, and the last lingering thoughts and feelings of sorrow and anger and loss left, dissolving in the gentle wind that was Mordin's voice as he continued to sing in a voice so soft and beautiful and gentle she would never have thought him capable of it.

She remained curled up, breathing quietly and staring out at the impossibly blue sea as Mordin finished his song, sitting up and stretching –more out of habit than need- only when the last wavering note had died off and left a comfortable, warm calm behind.

"Thank you," she said softly. Mordin looked at her, a soft but otherwise unreadable expression in his large almond eyes. "You're welcome," he replied as his usual energy seemed to return and he got up to pace a little, the way he always did. Not even death could take away that overabundance of energy he always had, it seemed, and that made Shepard happy.

She couldn't help the smile that spread on her face as Mordin suddenly stopped, picking up a seashell and giving it a brief examination. Startled by the sudden appearance of many tiny legs, he gave it a quick, careful poke before flinging the small creature out to sea with a brief, dismissive flick of his wrist as Shepard's laugh filled the air.

Turning towards the laughing woman, he gave her a short but overdone theatrical bow. Deep down she had known he could do that, of course, but seeing a classical human bow executed perfectly by a Salarian only set her off again and she almost fell off the tree trunk when he feigned offense.

Shepard took a few deep breaths to calm down before getting up and walking into the surf, closing her eyes and smiling as warm waves lapped at her feet and ankles. She dug her toes into the wet sand and revelled in the feeling of for once having all the time in the world and nothing to do.

Opening her eyes, she found that Mordin was once again searching for seashells. Smiling to herself, she bent down and absently raked her fingers through the fine sand once, twice, three times before they hit something hard. Frowning, she used both hands to dig the shell out of the wet sand, smiling when she saw what it was.

"Mordin," she called as she straightened up, showing off her catch as the water left glittering droplets like tiny diamonds on the shell as sunlight danced over mother-of-pearl and patterns in black over pale orange. The Salarian turned from his own searching, and his face lit up when he saw what she held. "Spider conch!"

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**Yup. That's it. I said it was short.  
**

**Spider conches are awesome, and I've been wanting to give Mordin one for a while now. I don't really know why, but I'm sure he'd be thrilled by it.**

**As always, reviews are love! Please note that flamers will be used to feed my Balrog army and/or roast marshmallows.**


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